But that is sort of my point - if I were to start a NEW guild from scratch (I did this once or twice during TBC and once at end WoTLK/Start Cata) I wouldn't know what to judge people from, since everyone will have done LFR from the get go and even then.. if someone is in full 502 gear or better from LFR or World bosses, I still don't know if he's worth anything.

And then there's the other end, how can I know that the guy in heroic blues/valor point gear isn't just extremely unlucky with drops and aren't playing in a guild and is actually really worth something to a raid?

But honestly.. fuck LFR :/

You do understand that you are killing your own argument with your badly aplied logic right?

So Purple should only be for high end raiding and not LFR so you can tell who has skill.
Old Purple = Heroic/Normal under the purple word now.
So having heroic/Normal shows you have skill.
If you didn’t raid you didn’t have old purples.
How can you tell if someone in LFR purple has skill? -> How could you tell in the old days if a person who didnt have old purple had skill so you would invite them in to raid to get purple?

I’m going to bet you gave them a test run to prove they had skill even if they had no purples?

If only we had a tool that was a lot like a raid where we could watch someones skills in action and determine if they were prepared to have purple gear (todays Normal/Heroic marked gear). You know, something like a raid but wouldn’t make us loose a lock out on a boss over someone who may not have skill.... Something with 25 players, many of the raid mechanics and is almost like a raid without actually being our guilds raid..... Something where people who are LOOKING FOR a RAID could all go to no matter what time of day it was even if all of your guildies were not on at that specific time....

But that is sort of my point - if I were to start a NEW guild from scratch (I did this once or twice during TBC and once at end WoTLK/Start Cata) I wouldn't know what to judge people from, since everyone will have done LFR from the get go and even then.. if someone is in full 502 gear or better from LFR or World bosses, I still don't know if he's worth anything.

And then there's the other end, how can I know that the guy in heroic blues/valor point gear isn't just extremely unlucky with drops and aren't playing in a guild and is actually really worth something to a raid?

But honestly.. fuck LFR :/

So you're bad at leading a guild?
It's obvious through interviews where someone stands with being able to handle themselves in a raid environment.
If it's not (maybe you struggle with reading people, you do have enough trouble distinguishing between lfr and normal/heroic loot items) then maybe take these tryouts for a trial run?
I don't know, it seems your problems really stem from you, and not LFD.
Continue to lean on it though.

So you're bad at leading a guild?
It's obvious through interviews where someone stands with being able to handle themselves in a raid environment.
If it's not (maybe you struggle with reading people, you do have enough trouble distinguishing between lfr and normal/heroic loot items) then maybe take these tryouts for a trial run?
I don't know, it seems your problems really stem from you, and not LFD.
Continue to lean on it though.

You really read what you want from what I write?

Right, you obviously love the new system where you don't have to do shit to get gear and that's ok - I don't like that approach. Agree to disagree.

Right, you obviously love the new system where you don't have to do shit to get gear and that's ok - I don't like that approach. Agree to disagree.

This topic is all about reading what you want from what someone else writes after all...

And I choose to agree that your logic is flawed and failed based on an old bar of excellence which is very clearly covered now under the header 'Normal Raid and Heroic Raid' on the gear and it doesn't matter if the gear says LFR or all blues of the old days because you still couldn't tell if a person had skill unless you examined them in a RAID LIKE ATMOSPHERE and interviewed them properly.

Do they spend the whole windlord raid stuck in whirlwinds? Did they run the correct circular pattern to avoid the attunement disks? Did they bubble the tank randomly or only when lots of raid event damage was about to hit? Did the tank intercept beams that stun and kill other players? Did they put up good dps/healing numbers? Did anyone complain about their behavior? Did they say, "GOGOGOGOGO" and then pull the boss before the tank was ready? Did they run under the Garalon? Did they stand near someone when chains were applied in MSV dog fight, did they fall in the pitt when the floor disapeared?

These are all things that can be tested in LFR without wasting a guild lock out or time on someone who doesn't meet the standards.

Me thinks thou dost complain waaaaaaay too much.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 05:49 PM ----------

Oh, and purple does not always = skill. We pugged a guy in this week that was in heroic gear for HOF (which we were running to gear up our new healer) and even though he constantly complained that we were running normal mode and his guild always does heroics he seemed completely incapable of running the correct circular pattern during attunement to avoid all the disks, he never survived a single phase of the second balcony.

Sometimes heroic gear just means that 9 people with skill carried you.

Cata was friendly to alts only because there wasn't enough to do. Blizzard designed Cata so players could spend less time in game and it backfired. Instead people leveled 453 alts and grinded all their gear/rep to max and said DONE.

That's not true at all. When Cata first came out you had heroics which required strategy and you also had a large number of raid bosses to clear. Rather than keep it going they dumped Zandalari trolls on us in dungeons in 4.1 and then a short, steadily nerfed 7 boss raid of Firelands, where more people spent time in the molten front than the actual raid itself. Small raids and tons and tons of free time resulted in people eventually tiring. DS wasn't much better. The catch up methods weren't the problem and never were. The problem was their uninterested, half-assed raids. If DS were done like ToT I don't think people would've tired of it so fast. ICC was around longer and people weren't entirely sick of it even when Cata came out.

MOP brought it back down to a mix between BC and LK. The missing link is the catch-up dungeons which is now LFR. They eliminated gearing and alt in 1 week.

If they allowed you to run obsolete LFRs daily instead of weekly things wouldn't be so bad. Only the luckiest of lucky get ToT ready in one week

BTW, what's so bad in saying DONE? I have other games I want to play. In Cataclysm I was able to say "DONE" for the week and go play something else. In MoP this became much harder.

There's nothing wrong at all but you are one of 8 million subscribers. Enough complained during Cata about nothing to do that they changed things. The OP is mad that this same thing was communicated to us.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 04:17 PM ----------

Originally Posted by ribald

You sound like a bit of a fanboy.

The "I'd like to see you do better!" argument is a terrible fallacy. If I order a meal at a restaurant and its arrives at the table cold and disgusting, the waiter wouldn't respond to my complaints with "Id like to see you cook something better then!".

Also, it's Blizzards game? Are you really saying that he has no right to complain about something be paid for?

Oh and Blizzard lie and make excuses all the time, like all video game developers.

If you're going to complain then at least be intelligent and send the complaint to Blizzard either by their forums or feedback. Crying on MMO champion is like complaining to your Mom that your mage just got nerfed.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 04:34 PM ----------

Originally Posted by hitandruntactic

That's not true at all. When Cata first came out you had heroics which required strategy and you also had a large number of raid bosses to clear. Rather than keep it going they dumped Zandalari trolls on us in dungeons in 4.1 and then a short, steadily nerfed 7 boss raid of Firelands, where more people spent time in the molten front than the actual raid itself. Small raids and tons and tons of free time resulted in people eventually tiring. DS wasn't much better. The catch up methods weren't the problem and never were. The problem was their uninterested, half-assed raids. If DS were done like ToT I don't think people would've tired of it so fast. ICC was around longer and people weren't entirely sick of it even when Cata came out.

They nerfed those hard heroics within 30 days of Cata's release. They nerfed the 4.1 dungeons as well. You just said the same thing I did. There wasn't enough to do which allowed more time to work on alts. If you were spending 40 attempts per boss at 13-15 bosses per dungeon in Cata you wouldn't have had time for alts.

If they allowed you to run obsolete LFRs daily instead of weekly things wouldn't be so bad. Only the luckiest of lucky get ToT ready in one week

Really? I thought you could run LFR over and over non stop. No wonder I'm not getting loot. Obviously you can't gear up in a week which is why people are frustrated. Unlike BC where you could buy badge gear and LK where everything was in RDF there is no method now to run unlimited dungeons to get gear. But that's what Blizzard wants. It never made any sense to run a dungeon 450 times to gear for a raid. Running LFR makes sense.

4000 Blizzard employers. Gawd knows how many MVPs, Community managers, Designers. All of them on Twitter, in forums, answering a million questions, some of the posters..may I say..downright rude assholes?

Okay..be fed up if you want to call that "Blizzard politics" but you gotta realize that no MMO is static, it never has the same crows, it develops and changes. What was right in 2006 might not be right in 2008 and what worked in 2009 might not work in 2012. It is adaptation and staying on your toes to be ahead of the curve.

...so go ahead, show them who is boss and stop buying a product that you disagree with. This isn't North Korea or something where you must love the leader or be shot....

What company are you looking at? Because it sure as hell isn't Blizzard. This actually sounds a lot more like RIOT Games, except without the community managers who are a worthless spot on the money roll, and MVP's who are nothing but players given a special text for no real reason besides a half-decent forum record. Oh, and that RIOT actually has more than one developer who answers any sort of questions, last I saw the RIOT list of employees that post about their job functions, playing games, and helping the community in general is around 90-100, none of which have "herp derping around the forums while giving vague, inconclusive and uninformed responses" as a job title. Last I saw Blizzard has 1 (note: 1) developer/game designer who posts about game issues with any sort of regularity at all anymore.

Even a recent article rating developers basically states that pretty much everything Blizzard (spot 17) is putting out recently isn't doing so hot, but they have a fantastic reputation for putting out quality (reputation basically meaning past tense). It says nothing about their community interactions since what is there is cloudy at best, fake at worst. RIOT on the other hand hit spot number 10 and is lauded for their community interaction and fantastic quality of product.

Question: When was the last time you did optional content for the sake of it being optional content?

If it's not part of progression, you aren't going to do it. That's why 'rep grinds' are there. If the dailies were meaningless, why would you do them? You wouldn't. You would make complaints that the dailies were useless and had no relevance to progression, then say the same thing about Blizzard not adding enough content just like in Cata.

A player joining a decent guild will usually do anything to convince. He will be on a trial period and will definitely not slack and expect a raiding spot.

The new guy isnt slacking or expecting a raiding spot. All he does is join the guild and the GM says "who wants to help attune this guy" and everyone else bails. The way attunements were in BC no one wanted to go back and raid old stuff for 1/25 people to be able to enter the current raid. No one today would want to go back to T14 so a new player could get into ToT. Most likely they would either have him do it himself through pugs or require it to join the raid team which could lead to poaching just like in BC.

And by that I mean their vague sometimes pointless comments that really don't get a definitive answer.

That and the downright lies.

I keep seeing "we made [x] change for mop because we were told [y] was a problem with cata"

I think that is such bullshit, they say this kind of crap when it suits them, when they flat out disagree the line is usually "ultimately its our game and we will do what we want" and then some line about "community collaboration on game development doesn't necessarily make a better game" now the line is "we gave you what you wanted and you still don't like it" i don't think that ANY of the feature in MoP are/were what the community was calling for.

There may have been several features that addressed specific issues, but none of them are/were done in a way that the community asked for. It always has its indignant blizzard signature on it.

(1) New features of MoP, dynamic quests and storytelling, scenarios, dailies, etc etc.

This was to address the problem of "not having enough to do" the problem is that these extra feature weren't really options they were required for any sort of progression, and that progression was tedious. Why couldn't they just add more dailies, more content without the insane rep grinds and/or required gameplay for progression?

(2) Balance changes. People have been claiming Mages are OP the ENTIRE expansion. (I don't play a mage, so this isn't the source of my issue, just an observation) they claim the whole expansion that they are pleased with where classes are... yada yada yada, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

Now all of a sudden mages are OP... and how do they fix it? By nerfing an ability that adds bonus spell damage by 15% from 30% HALF of what it was.

These drastic pendulum swings are SO fucking frustrating to me... why does it always have to be so damn extreme? Why can't they just make small tweaks to the game to achieve a balance where people are happy.

I can't say I blame them for being frustrated, and so their reaction toward the community will be awful. They do need to adjust their attitude a bit. The players are the only thing that will save WoW, while the company destroys it, without really knowing their mistakes (not in all areas of the game).

It's not Blizzard politics sigh. The fact is there are usually at least two different groups of people in the playerbase and pleasing one involves pissing off the other. Good example: the large amount of content in MoP. In Cata a lot of people complained they didn't have enough to do, now there is shitloads to do which is great for those people but shitty for people who don't have as much time or like to play alts. There is no magical solution Blizzard can come up with to perfectly please two diametrically opposed groups of customers.

Originally Posted by Bilbo Baggins

(1) New features of MoP, dynamic quests and storytelling, scenarios, dailies, etc etc.

This was to address the problem of "not having enough to do" the problem is that these extra feature weren't really options they were required for any sort of progression, and that progression was tedious. Why couldn't they just add more dailies, more content without the insane rep grinds and/or required gameplay for progression?

Honestly, none of it was ever required. You can beat MSV in quest blues and greens (and that is exactly what every serious raiding guild did in week 1), and after a few weeks in there you probably had better gear than you could get from the VP vendors. And I never ever had my VP cap without something to spend it on - which means at most I unlocked the rep vendors within 3 weeks. I wasn't even doing my dailies every day. So I call BS on the grinds taking too long. You only need Revered for gear and that was easy. All of this is irrelevant anyway since the current VP vendor requires rep you only get from the raid, making all previous rep gear obsolete and no dailies are required to access VP gear anymore.

The only thing I'll agree with is that Golden Lotus had too many dailies and it was crappy the way you had to finish GL to unlock Shadopan and AC - which has now been removed. Not that it matters because I got exalted with all those factions months and months ago (and again, I was doing dailies when I felt like it). Not that I even needed bloody exalted since you get gear at Revered, which was like a few weeks' worth of dailies max. And once again, you needed a few weeks to even get enough VP to spend.

TLDR: I call bullshit on any of that stuff ever being mandatory. And it certainly isn't mandatory now. The real problem is, if Blizzard puts something in the game, people assume it is mandatory. No matter what.

Originally Posted by Bilbo Baggins

(2) Balance changes. People have been claiming Mages are OP the ENTIRE expansion.

If by "entire expansion" you mean "entire existence of World of Warcraft".

Sometimes I think Blizzard should be less active with their community involvement. What I mean is that they shouldnt reply to extreme complaint threads, shouldnt tweet, shouldnt tell people why they do everything they do. What they do now encourages people to gripe to the company because they expect a response after seeing the same thing happen with other people. They also dont understand that they may be the only person playing with their problem or that its really their own fault.

I believe that Blizz basically uses their server generated stats, quitters questionnaires and forums/tweets/interviews to get the information they use to determine the way the game is going to go. They also do things just because they want to in order to add stuff people havent thought about. The problem is that there is not enough actual polling done with all players who are actually playing and instead the more vocal people win out. And these are never the same groups that win.

Group 1 likes group quests and complains there arent enough while Group 2 is happy with solo quests so they say nothing.
Blizz introduces tons of quests you need a group to complete.
Group 2 complains that they cant complete the quests to which Blizz answers its what players asked for.
Group 2 considers this a BS answer since they didnt ask for it and they are players. And they are now angry.

Now both groups are angry because at one point the game was made to play a way they dont like with the reason "you wanted it." It would have been better for Blizzard to have kept silent on why they made the change. The large shifts in direction also come from a large influence from interest groups (harcore raiders, casual raiders, hardcore pvpers, world pvpers, altoholics, soloers, ect.). An in game poling system would be a good way to get an actually representative survey of players opinions. Have an optional poll pop up when you log in that only takes a few seconds.

So to fix some of these problems I think Blizzard should:

Stop arguing with people on forums and social media.
Input more comprehensive opinion polling.
Stop explaining every choice they make.

I really don't know what happened to the community... I blame LFD... it ruined any realm rep that was left. People had to act nice or else you risked being blacklisted... and even if you weren't blacklisted... people in that guild might have ran a pug with you and realized you're an asshole... they then wouldn't invite you to the guild regardless of how good you were... but now people are just assholes and think they can get away with it because it's some dude on another server. But what confuses me more is why people didn't like TBC... Unless you didn't play it or you were bad/new to the game throughout TBC... there's no way you couldn't have liked it. WoW was perfect then... you literally couldn't skip tiers, you had to take on each one. Even heroics were better since you couldn't just switch it to heroic and walk in, you needed a key that required revered, which was later switched to honor... but even those heroics weren't easy. They were kinda hard and the epics weren't OP, you'd walk into Kara and already have new upgrades. People love getting new upgrades, it's just fact... so when I had multiple tiers to progress through without repeating the same content for more than a month, it was pretty fun... an experience you can't get now.

You do realize that this thread isn't about that, right?

Stating an opinion as fact does not make it fact. Opinions are not fact. So don't be stupid and make a fool of yourself by trying to pass off your opinion as fact.